Michael Winterbottom’s sort-of-adaptation of Tristram Shandy. Loved it. Made me laugh out loud in a nearly-empty art-house theater at 10 p.m. — no mean feat. Also refreshing: In an era of three-hour epics (seriously, what’s up with that? Is it supposed to be a value thing? When did the movie theater become Sam’s Club?), Tristram Shandy clocks in at a lean 90 minutes. Don’t go in expecting it to change your life and you’ll emerge amused. (Note the opposing view.)

I bought Magnus Mills’ Explorers of the New Century on the strength of this review alone. In fact, Laura Miller made it sound so good that I bought it the next day and read it this weekend. On the plus side, it’s a trade-paperback original, and thus exemplifies a trend I am happy to support. On the minus side, it wasn’t actually that good. Some nice prose, but I am pretty sure I will forget everything about the story in approximately six days.

Been listening to José González ever since, yes, that Bravia ad. Good music for a rainy day, and the month of March in San Francisco was essentially one giant rainy day.

Speaking of lean and mean movies, I was recently surprised to see that The Squid and the Whale — which had such a huge, Tolstoy-novel-like impact on me when I saw it in the theater last fall — is only 81 minutes long. It was my favorite movie that I saw last year, and well worth it if you haven’t seen it already. Like The Royal Tenenbaums meets Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage.